Ready, steady, go! With Black Friday and Cyber Monday on the horizon, things are going to get pretty crazy, pretty soon. If you work in online retail, the chances are, over the next couple of months, you’re going to be so busy that you are not going to have a moment to think. This is why you need to make sure your email marketing strategies are tied down and fit for purpose.

As you increase your acquisition marketing spend (paid search, Facebook advertising, TV, print, radio, etc.), you’ll be acquiring a lot of new customers, who in turn will be surrendering fresh email addresses. These fresh email contacts are ripe for exploitation – but you’re too busy to bother with tiresome list-building activities at this time of the year.

If this is your current frame of mind, you’re leaving cash on the table.

The average email address has a lifespan of only 18 months. While you might think this gives you a full year to re-target and drive repeat business, our experience shows that the fresher your email contact, the greater your chance of delivering a return on investment.

Consider This: Someone buying a gift may be prompted by an email to buy an extra item or two in the run-up to a major gift-giving time of the year – but that person may never buy from you outside of the holiday season. By the time the next holiday season comes around, your brand may no longer be relevant to your gift-buying audience. Best to hit them with promotions now.

Smart Marketers Automate List Building

Yes, we know that list building can be a chore – but there are a number of processes you can use to make it easier.

Manual Uploads: If you are manually uploading your lists, you need to ensure the process becomes part of your daily routine – so don’t leave the office without updating your lists. Remember, the more segmented your lists, the more targeted and therefore successful your future campaigns will be. During the holidays, highly granular segmentation might not be possible due to lack of time. Instead, why not create a very simple segmentation process? (For example, a fashion retailer might want to create four lists: men, women, boys and girls.)

CRM Integration: If you use the Salesforce.com CRM system, list building and segmentation should be a fairly painless operation. If you like the sound of pain-free list management, you should definitely schedule a demonstration of iContact’s iC4SF integration.